My not-quite-understanding of economics is like this:
What is money
money is a tool to influence people to do things for you, or give you things.
But on the flip side, rich people are harder to influence with money because they they don't need your money as readily.
So if everybody were suddenly given $1 million, then everybody would require more convincing to give up their property or do things for one another, so the people are no better off for that action. So the value of the dollar becomes depreciated in that action.
Basis of the economy
Ultimately, all this wealth trickles down to buying life's essentials -- food from the farmers. Because this is both a necessary commodity, and something which you can't put in the bank because it's perishable.
Convincing the farmers to grow food and hand it to you is the basis of any economy.
Stemming out from this are all of the auxiliary services: transportation, engineering, teaching, research, etc. A net-zero flow of money representing a balanced reciprocation of work, where each individual is contributing to and taking from the produce of your community in a sustainable way. That is the ideal.
Profit and Savings
One of the features of the system however, is that most people are able to do more than net-zero work, resulting in a personal profit, of savings or accumulating assets. Assets are good, but savings and profit are strange and artificial. Where is that money coming from? If money is just being handed around from person to person, there shouldn't be any more at the end than at the beginning should there?
So basically, it is debt. The origin of those gains is from promises, not actual money.
Savings are themselves a strange thing. What efforts people make in the past become less significant as time passes. Work is action in the present, yet assets represent work in the past.
As argued before, if everyone had lots of savings, then they would themselves require more convincing to do work, so the power of their money is less, and real value of their savings depreciates.
Spending of your savings is the basic force for inflation, because at that time you're only taking from society without contributing anything tangible.
Assets
Because everyone gains assets, they can use them as barter to get others to do work. This is normal. But assets are like a commodity. Most generally, the concept of supply and demand is tightly linked to value of any particular asset.
When I say assets, I refer to tangible assets, things that have real world value in themselves, independent of spending power of money.
When assets are not consumable and don't readily perish, like real estate, the more of it is created, the less the demand is for it, so the value of those assets depreciates.
What our assets are is a form a commodity mountain, which as it grows taller, the monetary value of those assets depreciates.
In work terms, workers make an effort to create something, and once it is created, the workers are not needed anymore. This can lead to reduced manufacturing and reduced employment.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. The ideal for a society is when we've taken care of most of our needs an no longer need to work as hard, and we can live in comfort from what we've created. Reduced employment can indicate progress.
Deflation
One of the effects of reduced employment, especially in situations where debts are still to be repaid, or if there are no savings to live off, is that people have less money to spend.
One of the effects of this is reduced spending, which means less demand of produce, and therefore less supply of it. Therefore reduced costs of produce. Therefore there is deflation, and spending power of the dollar is increased.
Notice that's a two-fold consequence: reduced employment without savings further reduces employment PLUS it causes deflation. If there is debt too, then the depreciation causes that debt to amplify.
The risk is that this escalates, where there is very high debt and very few workers, which causes that debt to spiral out of control while the dollar becomes worthless. The way to avoid that is explained below.
Inflation
Now inflation isn't necessarily a bad thing. It can help an economy that is heavily in debt. Suppose your small business is $1 million in debt, but making a profit of $1000 per day. Then suppose there is sudden economic inflation which shifts the value of the dollar -- so now you are making $2000 per day and your debt appears to be relatively halved.
So inflation counteracts debt, in just the same way as it weakens the value of savings. Economics relies on this. It removes those strange artificial things called 'savings'.
One of the effects of reduced employment with savings, is that if people begin to spend their savings, it leads to inflation.
So in conclusion, savings are a good contingency for stabilizing the value of the dollar in times of reduced employment, even though there is a risk of inflation make those savings worthless.
And that's how economics works.
So where does the solid gold stripper pole I was gonna put in my living room figure in? 